Aviation Business and Flight School Marketing
Running Effective
Google Ads
How to use Google Ads to
market your flight school
PPC Advertising
Google Ads For Flight Schools: The Ultimate Strategy
Google Ads, previously known as Google Adwords, are a form of PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. These advertising initiatives can produce quick, fast, and effective results if done right. They are a way to make your business appear at the top of search results when people who are interested in flight training are searching for pilot training academies as well as a method to build a long term stream of leads that you can turn on and off at will.
Example of "Sponsored" Google Ads
How Does PPC Work?
Pay per click ads are just like the name implies. For every click on Google on your ad, you need to pay a fee to Google. It's a great way to get your flight school in front of targeted prospective students that are not in your immediate network. If you've established a website, then your website will list below the sponsored ads. If you haven't properly SEO Optimized your website, then your site will more than likely be found at the very bottom if not the next pages of the search results.
A big concern with running PPC ads is how much it will cost. For flight schools and aviation businesses, we've seen the cost per click (CPC) hover between $7 dollars and $20 dollars a click depending on the area and keywords chosen.
You might be running the numbers in your right now. If I get 100 clicks on my ad, then that can cost anywhere from $700 to $2000. Which in turn may make you wonder if it's even worth it or not. The best question to ask yourself is how much is a student pilot worth in my flight school?
How much is a student pilot worth?
Let's keep going with the 100 clicks example. If out of those 100 leads, you contact all of them and 30 decide to show up to your flight school and do a tour or a discovery flight, you might get 10 or so that commit to coming again and train. A 10% conversion rate which is typical in the flight school market. With the $700 to $2000 dollars you spent, you now have 10 new students. Most students who commit to training to at least their private pilot certificate will bring on average $10,000-$15,000 dollars of revenue to your school. So you just paid $700 to $2000 to bring in more than $100,000 in revenue. It's a good investment.
However, you might be saying...
I've tried running Google Ads before and it doesn't work!
Most PPC campaigns fail because flight school owners fail to understand how the Google Ads platform actually works to get leads.
Does this sound like you?
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XYou are spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on Google Ads with little to no results...
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XYou are currently paying for PPC Google Ads management services but not seeing results
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XYou're tired of explaining how the flight training process and your pilot academy works to your marketing agency...
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XYour Google Ad leads are inconsistent and not the right fit for your flight school...
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XYour sales are stagnant and have slowed
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XYou are getting more leads from word of mouth than from Google Ads
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XYou're wondering why you're competitors are landing more jobs with Google Ads and you're not...
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XYou are not confident in your current Google Ads strategy and don't even know where to start...
We see so many flight schools that go into running a Google Ad campaign by themselves, pick a few keywords and stuff them all into one ad group, bid either too high or too low, and then send people directly to their homepage on their website for when people actually click. Or they use the Google Ad prompts when setting up a new account and let Google run your ads on autopilot and spend your money with no results. This is the wrong way to do it in so many ways.
What's the right way to go about running Google Ads?
Google wants to make sure that even paid listings are relevant to the user that is searching. So the quality of your ads and the page that people land on is all relevant to where you get placed in paid listings, along with the cost per click you're willing to spend. If a customer is searching for “how to become a pilot”, your ad isn't going to work well if it:
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XDoesn't have a headline that matches the user search term (ie. flight school, pilot training, etc.)
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XDoesn't give the viewer an incentive to call now and check your flight school out
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XDoesn't give them a reason to choose your flight school over others
The same goes with the page that your customers go to when clicking your ad. It needs to be relevant.
If this isn't done correctly you're back to square one. You're spending a lot of money paying more for ads than you need to pay and you're likely getting fewer calls than you should be. If the ad and landing page content doesn't answer the specific question or query they typed into Google's search bar, then you better believe it's unlikely they'll be reaching out to you.
So what's the right way to go about doing Google ads?
The Right Rudder Marketing Method
Engineer multiple ad groups and campaigns and campaigns. Structure keywords, negative keywords, and locations properly to fit your ideal student pilot. Let's get your flight school more students!
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1
Google Ad Account Audit
We look at the services you provide and find a space where you can thrive online with proper keywords. We'll use the keywords that your potential clients use to help match you together.
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2
Focused PPC Keyword Strategy
We do an in-depth competitive analysis to create a tailor-made and winning SEO strategy. Most competitors use automated tools and miss out on context. We understand the flight training market thoroughly and specialize in helping pilot training academies thrive.
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3
Landing Page Creation
We examine factors that Google considers when ranking your website. We take it a notch further by focusing on how Google ranks flight school websites to see areas we can improve.
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4
Conversion & Tracking Setup
We improve everything on the website that affects your rankings. Optimization ranges from meta descriptions, title tags, user experience optimization.
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5
Launch The Ad Campaign
We create content that provides value to the reader. It's easy to read, relevant, and no other website will have a website like yours.
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6
Ad Campaign Optimization
Link building helps you rank on search engines. It helps search engines categorize your website as relevant. We connect you to major sites to improve your rankings organically by creating content your flight school audience will like.
Join the leading flight schools that have
turned their online presence into predictable revenue
We make your flight school look as good as the planes you fly and help you make more money with ease.
Step 1. Start a conversation with Right Rudder
After understanding your goals and understanding your current situation, we'll develop a marketing plan to help you reach your goals.
Step 2. Launch your marketing plan
Get your marketing plan launched without the stress, hassle or guesswork. Right Rudder Marketing has you covered.
Step 3. Get results
Grow and scale your flight school with a predictable plan and have a full scale digital marketing agency on your team to keep you on track.
Fly with digital marketing experts that know the flight training industry.
We are a team of pilots that know the flight training industry. Because if your marketing team doesn't know what the pilot training experience is like, then how can they be successful for you? See what we're talking about by booking a call now!
Book a Strategy CallWe are a rapidly expanding pilot owned digital marketing agency working exclusively with flight schools throughout the United States. We're on a mission to help 100 flight schools double their student body and dominate their service area by 2025.
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